To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane.

Charles Bukowski
About This Quote

To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane. The more you know of the past and of history, the less you can think of such things. But once you feel them yourself, you get over it in a second. When I was a young soldier, we were walking in the street of a town we had just captured and I saw a man with a white flag.

We stopped and he came up to me and said: “I am an officer and I have just lost my regiment. Will you let me go?” I told him: “Yes, but on one condition. You must take me on your staff and be my orderly-major.” We rode off next morning with our flags flying and he gave an order to shoot on sight anyone who didn't salute us.

After we left the town we never saw him again. But I remember that night when he came up to me the way he looked the next morning when he was leaving for home—naked to his waist, his army boots full of holes, his trousers hanging down in shreds, not looking like much of a fellow any more—and I shall never forget it after all these years.

Source: The People Look Like Flowers At Last

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